Public and private doctrine

Maurice Cowling's first two books appeared in 1963, the year in which he also became a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Thirty years later this volume comments on his imminent retirement from Cambridge in two ways. First, it brings together a group of pupils, admirers and critics who have contributed essays dealing with facets of what Cowling calls 'public doctrine' in modern British history. Second, it contains critical assessments of Cowling's role as a major figure in Cambridge intellectual life. Because Cowling is not an anodyne person, this is not an anodyne book. If it contains any flattery then it tends to take the form of engagement with issues with which Cowling himself has done much to promote, especially the centrality accorded by him to religion as a determinant of systematic thought among the British intelligentsia. The result is a volume of important new studies, each of which may be read independently, which review the private cosmologies of politicians and churchmen but also the thought-world of a novelist or historian or architect. The book also situates Cowling's work in its wider environment which will aid those who are coming to it for the first time or who are